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About Hepatitis B, HBV, Living with Hepatitis B

Zero Discrimination Day

Every year, UNAIDS marks March 1st as Zero Discrimination Day. This year, Zero Discrimination Day highlights “the urgent need to take action to end the inequalities surrounding income, sex, age, health status, occupation, disability, sexual orientation, drug use, gender identity, race, class, ethnicity and religion that continue to persist around the world”.

Although hepatitis B affects about 300 million people worldwide, hepatitis B related discrimination still is pervasive. In fact, the Hepatitis B Foundation has been documenting these inequalities through our Discrimination Registry. Since May of 2021, we have documented over 250 cases of hepatitis B related discrimination from all over the globe. Of these cases, 213 individuals experienced discrimination personally and 151 knew of people who were discriminated against. Within these reports, people have described instances where they have been denied employment or lost employment due to their hepatitis B status or had been denied educational opportunities or immigration to another country. The top 10 countries where people have reported hepatitis B related discrimination are the Philippines, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, United States, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Sierra Leone. The Hepatitis B Foundation is aware that discrimination is happening around the world and encourages people to report any discrimination on the registry here.

Notably, the United States is in the top 10 countries where people have reported hepatitis B discrimination. Most of the reporting within the United States comes from individuals in the military living with hepatitis B. Currently, the military in the United States and many countries unethically prohibits individuals with hepatitis B to serve due to outdated guidelines. Now, since most individuals within the military setting should be vaccinated against hepatitis B and with the accessibility of hepatitis B antiviral therapy which can control the virus, the risk of transmission is extremely low. These guidelines should be updated to reflect national policies in the United States that prohibit discrimination. In the broader setting of the U.S. outside of the military, it is illegal to discriminate against people living with hepatitis B. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prevents employers, institutions, and other organizations from discriminating against an individual based on their hepatitis B status. The Hepatitis B Foundation hopes to one day end hepatitis B related discrimination not only in the United States, but also globally.

Ending hepatitis B related discrimination globally will require incredible effort from multiple partners like governments, organizations, community advocates, and people living with hepatitis B. The first step is demonstrating that discrimination is a serious issue around the world that impacts one’s life in a variety of ways, both economically and psychologically. The discrimination registry that we launched in 2021 will help us document discrimination around the world and help us determine areas of focus. We want to publish and share what we find from this registry so academic partners, policy leaders, advocates and health professionals can be made aware of the current situation and challenges people living with hepatitis B face. We hope to maintain this registry so we can assist people experiencing hepatitis B related discrimination. And we want to create a global movement to enact change, advocating for ending policy and practice that allows for discrimination, and instituting policies that protect people with hepatitis B worldwide. But we need your help – people living with hepatitis B, and people who have faced discrimination, are the most important partners in this effort! We need you as partners, to maintain the registry and fight hepatitis B related discrimination, and ensure the fight for equality continues. We are currently fundraising to keep the Discrimination Registry going and expand on these plans to help fight discrimination globally.

This fight against discrimination will take some time! Change does not happen overnight. Improving awareness, growing an advocacy movement, engaging leaders and decision makers, and especially changing policy, can take years – but we must continue our work together. The Hepatitis B Foundation has long been dedicated to assisting in discrimination related causes. In fact, the Hepatitis B Foundation played a key role in a landmark settlement by the U.S. Department of Justice that established protection for people with hepatitis B under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). That effort took three years to see policy change once we took up the fight, but it was worth it to have protections in place for people with hepatitis B. Learn more in our Know Your Rights section.

On Zero Discrimination Day, March 1st, and moving forward, please continue to use your voice to speak out against discrimination. If you need assistance please fill out the Discrimination Registry to document your experience and the Hepatitis B Foundation will try its best to assist you and navigate you through it.

Hepatitis B Advocacy, Living with Hepatitis B

March 1 is Zero Discrimination Day: Ending Hepatitis B Stigma Starts with Us

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2017-zero-discrimination-day_en.pdfBy Christine Kukka

Around the world, millions of people with chronic hepatitis B face wrenching discrimination that limits their dreams, education, careers, income and personal relationships. Here are examples:

  • A Vietnamese woman working in a hotel in Dubai is found to have hepatitis B and is fired, isolated, deported and given a life-time ban on re-entering the country.
  • A young person from the Philippines, aspiring to increase her income to support her impoverished family, is hired to work in Saipan, but her work visa is suddenly cancelled by the employment agency when it discovers she has hepatitis B.
  • A young man from the state of Washington, who worked hard in high school to get into the Naval Academy, is summarily dismissed within days of his arrival when it’s discovered he has hepatitis B. The U.S. military continues to bar people with hepatitis B from serving.

All of this discrimination is unethical, unnecessary and a violation of human rights. Hepatitis B is simply not transmitted through casual contact. The stigma that persists is based on ignorance and it impacts millions around the world daily. This is why we need to recognize Zero Discrimination Day on Wednesday, March 1.

Image courtesy of cooldesign at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Image courtesy of cooldesign at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

This day, designated by the United Nations, highlights the negative impact of discrimination and promotes tolerance, compassion and peace. Many hepatitis activist organizations, including the Hepatitis B Foundation, is using this celebration to draw attention to global hepatitis B discrimination.

In the U.S., some progress has been made to eradicate the unequal treatment of people affected by chronic hepatitis B infection. In 2012, prompted in part by complaints filed by the foundation, CDC issued new regulations that clarified that hepatitis B should not, “disqualify infected persons from the practice or study of surgery, dentistry, medicine, or allied health fields.” These recommendations and a U.S. Department of Justice letter warned medical, nursing, dental schools that they could not exclude applicants and students with hepatitis B, concluding, “… for most chronically HBV-infected providers and students who conform to current standards for infection control, HBV infection status alone does not require any curtailing of their practices or supervised learning experiences.”

However, today people with hepatitis B can’t even get jobs as hotel maids in many countries in the Middle East and Asia. Fear and ignorance, and reluctance by government officials to outlaw these discriminatory practices, have allowed these rules that diminish basic human rights to continue. The young woman who was exiled from Dubai, wrote of her experience:

“When I was 21, I had my internship in Dubai and needed to undergo a blood test. I was not aware of the rules in that country so when I was tested positive, the hotel that I worked for isolated me. I was going through a very hard time because I was completely alone in a foreign country. My work visa was canceled, they brought me to a place that looked like a jail, they took my iris scan, and I was deported along with a lifetime ban, which means I can never come back to that country again. That was the most horrible memory in my life. I am still scared every time I think about it. Sometimes I cannot sleep at night, I keep blaming, cursing myself for having this kind of virus inside my body.”

Image courtesy of meepoohfoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net,
Image courtesy of meepoohfoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net,

No one is to blame for hepatitis B, including the millions who were infected at birth or from unsafe and contaminated syringes and medical devices. There is a safe and effective vaccine that prevents hepatitis B today. When people are protected, there is no reason to fear that healthcare workers or hotel maids will spread this infection.

It is morally reprehensible that given the tools and knowledge we have that this discrimination should continue today.

Every day is zero discrimination day, and ending discrimination starts with us working individually in any way we can in our communities to end this stigma.

Make the NOhep:NOexcuse pledge and take simple actions to help eliminate viral hepatitis. It only takes a minute to pledge your support! 

The United Nations first celebrated Zero Discrimination Day on March 1, 2014, after UNAIDS, a UN program on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), launched its Zero Discrimination Campaign on World AIDS Day.

Baruch S. Blumberg Institute